So the notes are the coordinates to Earth. Kara is the Harbinger of Death… death of the old Cycle, and the start of the new one. But what was she “tapped” into? And how did Hera know?
The head angels (or “god”) sent the notes to Hera, who gave them to Kara so that she could finish the song and remember it for the all-important jump.
Interesting note I got from a friend from grad school: the numbers, which Kara derived from assigning numbers to the tune in Bear McCreary’s version of “All Along the Watchtower,” are derived from Javanese Gamelan cyphers that match the Javanese pelog scale, which is in use in “All Along the Watchtower.”
Pretty frakking cool, I thought.
Hey. So, the numbers, from what Starbuck was doing, assigning numbers to the notes, are basically the jump coordinates to Earth two, right?
But, so, how the hell did they find The Colony? Weren’t the very same numbers/notes the key to Starbuck, Anders and Adama finding the colony as well in their secret all nighter study group?
No wonder they totally glossed over how they found the damn colony then. Now we can argue the very same numbers plugged into Starbuck’s quadratic/differential equations (of which, where did all that come from? :D) led to numbers that were where the colony is, instead of being pretty much the same 12 numbers which also happen to be the coords to Earth as well.
Kind of annoying, huH? 
Adama got Kara to ask Anders in the tub of goo if he could find the colony. I think a hybrid being tapped into the whole universe thing allowed Anders to sense where it was located.
The numbers are just the scale tones of the tune in C# minor.
C#-D-E-A-G#-E-A-G#-E-D-C#
1-2-3-6-5-3-6-5-3-2-1
With, apparently, an extra “1” at the the beginning just to add spice…
With a flat 2, pretty common in newfangled rock n roll music (otherwise it’d be D# in true C# minor).
Well, of course there’s an extra 1 at the beginning. They’re dialing long distance, after all!
Originally Posted by DavidFromMontreal
The numbers are just the scale tones of the tune in C# minor.C#-D-E-A-G#-E-A-G#-E-D-C#
1-2-3-6-5-3-6-5-3-2-1With, apparently, an extra “1” at the the beginning just to add spice…
With a flat 2, pretty common in newfangled rock n roll music (otherwise it’d be D# in true C# minor).
If you want to split hairs, that’s no c# minor scale but a c# phrygian mode. 
(Or a Pelog scale in Javanese music, I’m told.)
And these are also THE numbers from the ABC show “Lost” ! It all makes sense now !
I get it now. The island has a reaptor buried in it somewhere, that is what causes it to jump, and Dharma are the descendants of BSG people. The “apparitions” are head people and the smoke monster…? Still haven’t figured that out yet. Maybe Boomers soul?
That’s as good a theory as any! 
I have to say, I thought it was really cool that the song itself was the coordinates of Earth! I can’t wait to see Bear’s blog post about the finale when it comes out and get the full story.
Yes, my phrasing was ambiguous. The song is definitely in C#m (but like much rock music exploits a relative major ambiguity), but the melody uses the notes of the parallel Phrygian mode. All Along the Watchtower ain’t modal, though. Rock ‘n’ roll is stuck in the tonal language of the rest of Western music since, oh, somewhere between Josquin and Buxtehude, anyway. Really, I was being way too fancy (or, if you’d rather, incorrect) calling it a flat 2, it’s the applied 4 of VI – the chord is A major at the time (VI, or the relative major of C# minor), so the melody uses a D because A major doesn’t have a D# (except, of course, in Lydian mode… ;)), and that tonal difference between the major and minor is exploited to lean down on the tonic from a semitone above, which indeed sounds pretty modal.
The Pelog scale can’t really be expressed in Western pitches. Sure, the nearest pitches to this melody would be Pelog – or two modes of Pelog, the pathet nem or pathet lima, to be precise – but the tuning’s all wrong. Javanese music divides the octave into nine equal (well, mostly equal) intervals, not twelve as in Western music. The same scale tones occur in the Selisir mode of Balinese music, too, but again, different tuning. Not to mention the entire musical context is all wrong. Still, it’s a neat parallel, but if you look through Bach you’ll find the same parallels and I’m pretty sure Johann Sebastian never went to Jakarta.
Wait…old J.S. spent time in New England in 1712, according to P.D.Q., so why couldn’t he have gone to Jakarta?
How cool that you know this stuff! I don’t know enough about gamelan music so when a friend of mine suggested this, it made about as much sense to me as assigning numbers to aspects of the composition alla total serialism like Babbitt and Boulez, which is the direction I was going (and which REALLY doesn’t fit with pop music theory).
I’m not so sure thinking of it as c# phrygian, even in the context of pop music, is incorrect. Of course, Dylan’s original doesn’t use the phrygian lick that Bear McCreary wrote for it. He just oscillates between c# minor and A major, doesn’t he? Modality like this tends to be rather stuck to melodic lines in pop, rather than harmony, so I’m being a bit cheeky.
Josquin to Buxtehude, though? :rolleyes:
You’re at McGill, aren’t you, David? I thought maybe you might be when I heard you sing a couple of podcasts ago. Sweet!
The melody certainly is Phrygian, but that’s rather a coincidence. Modal music itself isn’t based on the major-minor harmonic. It sounds “folky”, for want of a better adjective. And yes, the song oscillates between C#m and A, like lots of minor-key rock music it exploits the relative major ambiguity, and the natural 4th tone of the relative major is a big part of it.
You’re right, I was at McGill… 15 years ago. As I said on the podcast, I’m out of practice. I took my degree in opera singing and music composition and became a chemist. (I’m waiting for my TRIS buffer’s pH to stabilize as I write this…)
Awww…you guys are feeding my inner music geek. I grew up steeped in music–my mom was a professional organist, and I played piano and clarinet, among other things. I was always a bit too “instinctive” about music, though…had a hard time wrapping my head around the theory even though I find it completely fascinating.
Incidentally…I study literature and culture now, but I used to be a biologist, and also used to work in a lab purifying coagulation zymogens. My point is I have made many a TRIS buffer in my day. Sometimes I really miss lab work.